Inventor Tutorial for Information Errors – Introduction
I ran into a bunch of “Information” errors while working on the iCabinet, and thought it was worth mentioning as this can be a perplexing error, especially to a newbie.
The little 
icon is supposed to denote that there is Information regarding a problem in the feature (or constraint if its in an assembly). If you are working in an .ipt when the error shows up, and you somehow find the error’s description in Inventor Help under Errors > Assembly Constraints (why would you look there when working in a part?) it states:
Information about the attempted constraint is available. If multiple problems are found, you can expand and collapse the message hierarchy while you evaluate the needed actions.
Just below the info above, (If you continue reading) you will find:
“Note These same symbols indicate modeling errors as well as constraint errors. If an error prevents a model from solving, you cannot accept the error. Instead, you can follow the steps outlined by the Design Doctor to resolve the error.”
The problem is that there usually are no steps to follow in Design Doctor –as you can see in the image above, Design Doctor is greyed out. I ran into this when I first started using Inventor, and found just found a post in the inventor discussion group from 2003 discussing the same thing…
“CIRCLED I ICON IN AN ASSEMBLY“
For someone new to Inventor, this can be very frustrating as there is no real help in Help –even if you can find the correct subject. Also, there is no tool-tip when hovering your mouse over the icon, and nothing in the right mouse click context menu related to the problem…..so you may end up with a ton of these icons and no idea how to proceed.
The good news is that there is not much of a problem at this point. There is likely to be a redundant or otherwise bad constraint somewhere in the model just before the first error icon. No need to panic, the model is fine for the time being, just make sure you take care of the problem at your earliest convenience (the first time I got one of these errors, my boss happened to peer over my shoulder, point to one, and ask “what’s this” ).
So what was the problem?
In the iCabinet, the error occurred due to a plane created by line and point on geometry contained within a placed, derived sketch block who’s link to its base component was severed causing the block to revert all user parameters to plain dimensions —–(why?)—– which caused a previously driven dimension to become a redundant dimension which caused an over-constrained condition in the sketch block which transferred its condition to the model everywhere that particular block was present with a plane created as stated. Simple 🙂
The Fix?
The fix was very easy in this case. Simply deleting the redundant constraint in the sketch block cured all of the errors. But every case will be different, so I decided to set up a little tutorial page for those who wish to practice the step by step creation and solving of this error (I’ll supply the sample files), and hopefully the errors of other peoples models at some point. It will be good practice as these techniques will apply in other problem solving expeditions as well.
If you have your own part with errors that you can’t figure out, and don’t mind a tutorial being made out of it, send it along. I’ll have a look-see.
Information Errors Navigation
